Ranked number one is James Joyce's
Ulysses, written from 1914 to 21, published in 1922 and a source of
controversy every since (for example, banned as obscene in the U.S.
until 1933).

My last reading of the novel was in
1962 as an 18-year-old college freshman in one of the best courses I
have ever had—a "close reading" introductory humanities class that in
the spring semester focused on just four books (Paradise Lost,
Huckleberry Finn, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses).
We spent more than a month on Ulysses itself. I first found it dense,
perplexing, and often incomprehensible, but after reading and
re-reading, after studying interpretations by others, I came to love it
(and understand some of it).

Yet as the years passed,
and the inevitable dinner conversations occurred about the five best
novels we had read, Ulysses was never mentioned by anyone (except the
stray English major). And when I would ask about it, most would answer:
"have started it several times, but never got very far. Too hard."

So,
inspired by the "best novels since 1900 list" , with affection dimmed
by time and having forgotten almost everything I may have once known
about the novel, I decided to try again almost 50 years later (!!!!).

What
I found was two novels: a deeply humanistic one which brilliantly and
beautifully captures the life of a day in Dublin primarily through
three main characters; and a second, highly literary one of surpassing
complexity and, without careful study, limited accessibility.

The
deeply humanistic novel gives us remarkable insight into Stephen
Dedalus (a young writer who aspires to literary greatness, is haunted
by the death of his mother, rejects the superficiality of journalism
and is teetering on the edge of alcoholism and dissipation); into
Leopold Bloom (an advertising salesman, lapsed Jew, lover of food and
drink, son of a suicide, father of a dead son and a ripening teenage
daughter and wanderer who traverses Dublin during the day and night,
befriends Stephen, and returns to his marital bed which, as he knows
well, was the scene of an afternoon affair between one Blazes Boylan
and his wife); and into Bloom's wife Molly (a singer and earthy
mother/wife who fears aging, is jealous of her younger daughter, longs
for a sexual relationship with Bloom, relishes her afternoon affair,
talks frankly about her bodily functions, speaks in vivid
contradictions about love, children, life, aging and women, and at the
end remembers romantically the time when she and Bloom first made love).

Unlike
many 19th century novels, this humanistic one does not end in either
marriage or death, but in ambiguity about what will happen in the
future to Stephen, Bloom and Molly and to their relationships. But this
uncertainty grows out of a vivid recreation of the multiple sights,
sounds, smells and voices of Dublin on June day in 1904. Bloom's pork
kidney breakfast frying in a pan. The sound of the trolley cars. The
vomit in the bedside bowl of Stephen's dying mother. Tugs moving across
the horizon on the "snotgreen sea." The funeral of an old drunkard. The
birth of a child. The arguments in a pub. Bloom masturbating on the
beach as he watches a young woman show off her knickers. Stephen and
Bloom in the nightmare of Nighttown. Stephen and Bloom at Bloom's home
watching the wandering stars and peeing below Molly's window. Molly
relieved that her menstruation shows she is not pregnant by Boylan.

Joyce
set out to create life in all its fullness without heroic scenes or
gestures or declamations but through a fully realized expression of a
city and its people on one typical day—and through ironic puncturing
of human pomposity and pretense. Despite its reputation as a difficult
read, many of the chapters or important passages in Ulysses are
accessible to a regular reader who is not a candidate for a PhD. For
example: the opening chapter where Stephen is mocked by his friend and
critic "stately plump Buck Mulligan; the passages in the pub where
Bloom engages in verbal warfare with the anti-Semitic "citizen;" the
distant seduction of Bloom on the beach by Gerty McDowell who reveals
herself as she leans back to watch the fire works shoot into the sky
and then reveals that she is lame as she limps away; and even the last
two chapters, one in the form of a catechism revealing the relationship
between Stephen and Bloom and the second the famous
stream-of-consciousness thoughts of Molly as she lies next to Bloom in
the early hours of the morning.

Yet, the second
Ulysses, the highly literary one, is still complex and inaccessible to
a one-time generalist reader. Like many great works of literature, it
requires repeated reading and deep study fully to understand—and
ultimately to enjoy—the many dimensions and layers. The most obvious
complexity, of course, is the analogy to Homer's Odyssey (Latinized
from Greek as Ulysses). The novel is loosely structured to mimic
Homer's epic. And the main characters in Joyce's novel have referents
in the Odyssey, although with profound differences: Bloom as a
non-heroic Ulysses, Stephen as Ulysses' son Telemachus, but son without
a strong attachment to his own father; and the faithless Molly as the
faithful Penelope. Understanding the ways in which Ulysses is an ironic
commentary on the Odyssey, and the ways in which Bloom, Stephen and
Molly are, and are not, like Ulysses, Telemachus, and Penelope is a huge
enterprise unto itself, upon which books have, of course, been written.

Joyce's
novel is also stuffed with allusions and parodies and riddles, many of
which require substantial knowledge outside the book. As Joyce himself
said, he had "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep
professors busy for centuries arguing over what I mean" which would
earn the novel "immortality." One whole chapter on child labor and
child birth is written in many different styles of English to show the
birth of the language. The novel in various places and various ways
addresses complex themes like the relationship between Christians and
Jews, the aspirations, failures and pedantry of Irish Nationalism and
the Irish Literary Revival, the interconnection between love and
betrayal. And the style of the novel is, in fact, many different
styles: in abandoning the omniscient narrator, the novel is often read
as the true beginning of modernist literature.

So, Joyce's
Ulysses is still a very hard read. How hard may be seen by contrasting
it with the second "best" novel on the Modern Library list: The Great
Gatsby. This novel is surely on everyone's list of top five favorite
novels: it is short (one-quarter the length of Ulysses); it is
accessible; it has an engaging narrator; it tells a powerful story from
start to finish; it is written in beautiful, lyrical and penetrating
prose; and, although it has many complex sub-texts, it sounds a single
powerful theme—the failure of a materialistic American dream. Gatsby,
too, bears reading and rereading to uncover the layers of complexity,
but a first reading—or a reading after long absence—is a powerful,
moving narrative experience in a way far different than Ulysses.

Still,
I urge that people read the first Ulysses I rediscovered, the deeply
humanistic novel which is bursting with the enormous variety of life. I
do have to say that my re-introduction to the novel was aided by 24
recorded lectures—simply entitled "Joyce's Ulysses"—delivered by
James A.W. Heffernan, emeritus professor of English at Dartmouth (and
available from The Teaching Company). Heffernan focuses primarily on
the character and psychology of Stephen, Bloom and Molly but the
lectures provide a guide through the chapters of the book and relate
them to the Homeric myth and put them in context of other recurrent
themes (e.g. Irish Nationalism). Perhaps that reading of the "first"
Ulysses will provide a stimulus to explore the almost infinite
dimensions of the second, literary one.

Both Gatsby and Ulysses have famous endings.

Gatsby:

Gatsby
believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year
recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow
we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine
morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Ulysses:

...and
how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him
as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then
he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put
my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my
breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said
yes I will Yes.

Both endings are not without deep ironies.
But, the final sentences of Gatsby are about the futility of our
dreams. The end of Ulysses is about the affirmation of our humanity.

About the Author

Ben Heineman Jr. is is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and at the Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance. He is the author of High Performance With High Integrity.

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